NYT BREAKING: MASSIVE E-VOTING FAILURE IN NEW YORK! [View All]

Editorial Observer
What’s Wrong With My Voting Machine?
By ADAM COHEN
December 4, 2006
The New York Times

To the long list of recent Election Day horrors from butterfly ballots to six-hour lines, add “vote flipping.”

In Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey and other states last month, there were reports some confirmed by election officials that when voters touched the screen for one candidate, the machine registered it for another. One Florida Congressional race, in which the Republican won by fewer than 400 votes, is in the courts because paperless electronic voting machines may have failed to register as many as 18,000 votes.

-snip-

New York’s official testing agencies notified election officials last week that none of these five machines fully meet the state’s standards. New York has been the slowest state to adopt new voting machines, and the fact that the manufacturers were displaying products that still did not comply with state law says a lot about the basic level of competence in the industry.

No one in New York has much patience for more delay. But if it comes down to waiting longer or sticking voters with illegal or unreliable machines that will undermine democracy for years to come, officials should wait, and insist on better machines. New Yorkers, and all Americans, deserve better choices than the voting machine industry is offering.